SGA Pre-GCSE Pathway

The pathway prepares pupils for the demands of GCSE study in a British school. Pupils take selected mainstream subjects alongside their British peers, taught by subject specialists in small classes, while receiving intensive English language support designed to close the gap between everyday fluency and the academic English that examined subjects require. The year is spent inside the school's normal timetable rather than in a separate international stream.

The annual fee covers tuition across the three terms of the academic year, the intensive English language programme, full boarding accommodation and meals, and full integration into the school's boarding community. Fees for this programme are quoted inclusive of VAT. A deposit is payable, charged pro rata per term. Entry for public examinations is charged separately by the school. Every pupil completing the programme receives an SGA International Immersion Certificate of Achievement together with an end-of-programme academic transcript.

Pupils board on the school's wooded campus in Royal Berkshire, in one of three family-style boarding houses, sharing daily life with the school's own boarders. Younger year groups share bright, spacious rooms with their own common room, kitchen and bathrooms, while older pupils share with one other and have their own desk. Boarding staff are resident and experienced, and the school's inspection report describes a close-knit, home-from-home boarding community.

Full board is included. All meals are taken with the boarding community in the school dining room, and the boarding houses have their own kitchens for use between meals.

Pupils join the school's co-curricular programme alongside their hosts, with the after-school and in-house activities run in the boarding houses and weekend outings. Sport uses the school's own pool, sports hall, tennis and netball courts and pitches, and the creative programme has the use of a 300-seat theatre, dance and drama studios, art, textiles and photography studios and music rooms.

The campus stands in woodland in Royal Berkshire, twenty minutes from London Heathrow Airport and under an hour from London Gatwick. Pupils have use of a 25-metre six-lane indoor swimming pool, a large sports hall, eight tennis courts, three football pitches, six floodlit netball courts and a sports pavilion, together with a 300-seat theatre, drama and dance studios, a purpose-built library, a science centre, art, textiles and photography studios, music rooms and a recording studio, and ICT suites.

A full academic year is long enough to change what a pupil can do rather than merely what they have seen. Pupils arrive with the rest of the school at the start of the year, settle into a boarding house, and spend three terms being taught, assessed and supported as any other pupil is. By the end they are being prepared not for a visit to a British classroom but for examined study inside one.